“Know what? We need a scapegoat,” I told the Preacher. “Someone to take the blame for everything that goes wrong around here.”

He chuckled.

It all started the day the car stereo died. We’d had music on the way to our friends’ home, but driving back, the radio wouldn’t turn on. “Locked,” read the digital display.

“You used it last,” the Preacher said. “What’d ya do to it?”

My hackles stood at attention. Unmerited blame, they shrieked.

“Nothing—at least nothing I haven’t done a thousand times,” I huffed. “I turned it off.”

The Preacher began fiddling with knobs, trying to fix the problem, still sure I’d caused it. Nothing worked. Stewing at his accusation, I stared straight ahead.

Happily, the next time the car started, so did the stereo.

We agreed later: we have a bad habit of leaping to place blame. It begins early in the morning some days…

“When I got up in the middle of the night, the kitchen had a strange blue glow. SOMEBODY forgot to turn off the stereo last night.” (Replace the last part, the part after “forgot to,” with “turn off the porch light,” or “turn down the furnace,” or “lock the door.”

Ad nauseum.

Yes, we said, a scapegoat would help. And then I remembered.

Decades ago, when the Preacher’s maternal grandmother died, we travelled East for her funeral.

Grandma Corney owned hundreds of unmarked antique family photos. No one wanted them, but somehow the box ended up at the Preacher’s mother’s home.

One afternoon, as Mom sat doing a crossword puzzle, I sifted through it, wondering about the stories forever hidden behind the unnamed, unsmiling faces—especially the face in one beautifully preserved professional photo. Nicely posed in a field, stood a large, white, long-haired—and rather regal-looking—goat.

I snickered. “Hey, Mom, is this a relative too?”

Without looking up, she answered, “They’re all relatives.”

I stuck the picture under her nose. She laughed. “I’ve never seen that goat before. My mother never told me his story!”

The forgotten goat fascinated me. No one knew or wanted him, so when we left Ontario, I tucked him in my suitcase, brought him home, and put him in storage, thinking I may have a use for him one day. Or perhaps learn why someone had once loved and honoured him.

We used the old goat as a play prop once. For the most part, we ignored him for years. But after the car stereo hiccupped, I dug him out.

The Preacher named him Cornelius S. (“Scape”) Goat and hung him on the wall above the parrot cage. He serves us well there, bearing the penalty for our errors and disasters with dignity and grace.

He’s brought a degree of peace. Even better, he’s a marvelous conversation piece. I hardly ever wonder about his real story anymore.

A token picture of Christ hangs in many homes, churches, and facilities. Seems to me, he and the old goat have much in common.

The Preacher and I spoke at one of our former churches a while back. The platform seemed lower and wider, but the church had changed little in two decades.

 It took a long time to get to my seat—too many friends lined the aisles. And I would have missed Lisa altogether if she hadn’t spoken. Her serene face, now etched and weathered, raised as I passed. “Do you remember me?”

 I’d know that Scandinavian accent anywhere. For two years, Lisa had been my “secret sister”.

 She’d drawn my name one year, I’d drawn hers the next. I remember well her anonymous monthly notes. Her small “special day” gifts were chosen with obvious love and care. One especially.  

 On the day I opened Lisa’s birthday gift to me, I recall wondering what woman could have given it. Staunch, no-nonsense farm women populated the women’s group. An artist at heart, I felt often like a bird that had strayed from its natural habit.

 The gift seemed a great contradiction: a tiny rectangular box that didn’t open, decorated with a painting of a mother and a child, holding hands and walking down a long road. From its side protruded a crank with a red knob on the end.

 Puzzled, I turned the crank. Out came a tune—La Vie en Rose.

 I wound the music box up often that year, just for the tickle it brought. Somehow it helped me forget my feelings of displacement. Someone in that church had chosen a gift of absolutely no practical value. Something crafted only to bring delight. The thought comforted me.

 At the end of the year, I learned her name. Lisa had also been transplanted to that community. For years she’d tried to fit in. No doubt she understood my unspoken feelings.

 “Of course I remember you,” I said now. “How could I forget? I still have the music box you gave me. It’s survived all our moves!”

 Lisa slowly raised a closed hand, then opened it. In her palm rested a small circular brooch that appeared to have Scandinavian origins. Its circumference was decorated with scalloped edges and embossed hearts. At the center rested a small, bouquet of tiny, perfectly formed roses and forget-me-nots.

 “Do you remember this?” she asked shyly.

 I stared, unbelieving.

 “You made it for me,” she said.

 I had, indeed. In the days when I worked more with art, and less with words, I’d carefully sculpted its every bud and blossom—even the white carved base, from bread, white glue, and acrylic paint.

 “You kept it!” Our eyes met over her hand. In that moment I think we both knew, in the quiet places of our hearts, that God had arranged those gifts himself.

 When life places you – even by what seems your own choice – in situations where you feel lost, alone, and out of your comfort zone, know this: God hasn’t lost your address. If you watch for his unexpected gifts, you’ll find them.

Could have been his grey hair. Most likely his walker, a long-term result of his West Nile neurological Disease. But a few weekends back, someone much younger guessed the Preacher’s age at 75—almost two decades up the road. It stuck in his craw, I think.

At precisely 8:45 last evening, he yawned and snapped off the lamp beside his chair. “I’m going to bed.”

We’d just finished watching a movie—the story of a pre-WW11 family who, tired of their dreary English countryside, moved to a villa in Greece. There they had lively and extravagant experiences, involving people and a menagerie of “other animals”.

Without leaving our living room, the movie transported us about as far from a Saskatchewan winter as one could imagine.

For ninety minutes, we watched warm, wild and colorful sights. Heard exuberant, lively sounds. Lived with that zany English family in the sun-warmed Greek countryside. I howled, the Preacher chuckled. Even Ernie the parrot, perched on my shoulder, got all stirred up.

Ernie gets excited often—by the arrival of company, the ringing of a phone, or the playing of the piano. He sounds like a cross between a famished donkey and a flock of irate crows at first. Then he moves on to big noise—garbled, guttural hellos and a vast variation of whistles and unexplainable utterances.

After he mussed up my hair and tried to crack my ear (albeit gently) I transferred him to the Preacher’s shoulder. There he contented himself with laughing whenever we did, and clucking like a chicken at the loudest parts.

Far too much quiet descended the moment I ejected the DVD. Even Ernie clammed up. 

I looked over at the Preacher. “Good grief, Rick, I’m not going to bed at quarter to nine at night. We’re like a pair of old people. That’s our problem around here. We’re dead before we’re dead.”

He grinned. “I’m still going to bed—to read.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to Greece. Gonna get myself a cute Greek boyfriend…”

Not waiting for me to finish, the man crowed (in his usual supportive way), “Go for it!”

“…a cute little boy about twelve years old, who loves animals!” I finished.

We both chuckled over our big fat Greek adventure, then he left the room. I watched him go on ahead. I do that often these days.

The little boat of our joint lives has plied a long river. Over our thirty-three year marriage, we’ve drifted in calm waters, endured a few storms, encountered some white water, and faced plenty of pirates. Our faces both show it.

But we’re still pulling together. We promised, and God has helped us.

“Many waters cannot quench love, and the floods cannot drown it,” King Solomon said. In spite of my silly Greek fantasy, I’d like to add, “and age cannot stop it.”

We’re in this boat till God leads it to the dock—we make that choice daily.

Committed love. It’s better than chocolate. Aim for that.

When presented with what seems indisputable, first-hand evidence, I have a remarkable ability to leap to wrong conclusions.

Decades ago, en route home from our honeymoon, the Preacher and I stopped overnight at my parents’ home. Another pair of visitors—only a few years further into their marriage—camped on an air mattress in the next room.

After everyone had gone to bed, to our dismay (okay…and amusement), a good deal of laughter, heavy breathing, and embarrassing comments migrated to us through the dividing wall.

The following morning, feeling it my sacred duty to advise more discretion, I took the wife aside. “Uh… we had a hard time getting to sleep last night.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Well….have you noticed how thin the walls are in this house?”

“No,” she answered, all innocence. “Why should I?”

“Well…we heard some….uh….sort of… (cough, cough—this was an entirely different era, remember) commotion after you went to bed.”

“Really?” She seemed puzzled.

“What commotion?”

“Well…comments, for one thing.”

“What comments?”

I told her, my face burning. To my surprise, she hooted in laughter—then explained the truth.

A quarter-century ago, air mattresses often had several separate chambers—one for the pillow, one for the mattress. Most people blew them up on lung power alone. It seems that when she and her husband had laid themselves down to sleep, their mattress had proven far too soft. They decided to change that—without getting up to turn on the light.

Seems they’d had big trouble finding both air-valves in the dark, and even bigger trouble getting the correct amount of air into them. It took forever to get it right, she said. When her husband had finally found the correct valve for the pillow, he’d blown in too much air—gotten the thing hard as rock.

The process set them gasping with giddiness. They must have been louder than they realized, she said. They never intended us to hear, she said—never suspected what we may imagine in our freshly married state.

As she explained what had really gone on on the other side of the wall, truth developed a whole new set of pictures in my head. Same captions, but accurate images.

I wish I could say that was the last time I leapt to delusions. Truth skews far too easily. The problem escalates when we report our assumptions to others—without searching out the full story.

Gossip. Shabby journalism. “Bearing false witness,” according to God. Gossip injures, whether delivered by mouth or media.

Even genuine incidents, when wrapped in the flimsy yellow rags of assumption and reported as truth, can inflict horrible, irrevocable damage. If you’ve ever been a victim, your wounds are likely still oozing.

Of all people, those who profess to be friends of Christ—Truth personified—should have a passion for seeking, and speaking, truth.

Lord, forgive us our assumptions, as we forgive those who assume against us.